OT: Global Internet Maps

Looking at this I'm very surprised that two of the richest countries in
the world, namely the USA and the UK are way down the list for the
fastest broadband speeds.
Blimey! even *Romania* and *Lithuania* beat us hands down.
France is a big country and they are way above us both too.
We should both be either at the top or very close to it.
Anyone agree?
http://www.internetsociety.org/map/global-internet-report/?gclid=CN6Q2I6OgcwCFUs6GwodD4QG0g#download-speed-fixed

All that indicates is the average speed of users. Considering the price
of cable and internet on the rise (in the US), people usually purchase
what suits their need, which is 50 Mbps or less. Therefore, the average
will always be below that. I'm guessing internet service is cheaper in
other countries. Proving once again the greed within the US.

I suspect that they are only talking about people in the biggest
cities in those countries. In the case of Hong King it is just one big
city.
As I said earlier, the cable companies have a choke hold on internet
service for most of America and that is a secondary or tertiary
business for them. In the case of a company like Comcast, TV and
producing TV/movie content are #1 and #2 for them. Internet service is
just a byproduct of their TV business and somewhat cannibalistic to
the TV part. They don't have a good reason to make it go any faster.
We really should be separating data from content.

This sounds somewhat like a pissing match. You need only 5 mbps
to stream a hi-def movie. Unless you're doing downloads of different
torrent files, or streaming multiple HD movies, you won't notice the
difference between 5 mbps and 100 mbps.
Of course you can go to one of the speed sites to measure your
"performance," but that means nothing in terms of practical use.
It's akin to various benchmarks used to test the speed of your
graphics card, CPU, or memory.

There's a theory about early adopters and such. I think it groups
people in five categories. The early adopters
buy the stuff when it's just marketed and expensive. It doesn't have all
the bells and whistles that will come with later models
or the bugs worked out. Wasn't the U.S. pretty much at the forefront of
the internet?
There's also a tendency to keep what works. Why buy a new car if the
current one gets a person from point A to B?

That certainly applies to the phone companies and their
infrastructure. I know my DSL is a result of Sprint rebuilding a mom
and pop phone company infrastructure back in the 80s when they thought
land lines were still going to be a business. It is fiber backbone,
electronic switching, digital transmission and copper for the "last
mile". I get 10 meg DSL from that.
They have extended FiOS to some homes, giving you pretty fast
internet, TV and whatever but not where I am.
I doubt they could charge enough extra to make it viable.
If they were forward looking enough to drop fiber in the hole in 1986,
could have Singapore speeds now although I am not sure why I would
need it.

In most parts of the USA, people have a choice only between one phone
company and one cable company. Where I live, the only choice is between
Charter (cable) and AT&T (DSL or U-Verse) -- no Comcast or Verizon here,
although Comcast is in the next municipality a mile or so away (but the
people living there can't get Charter): most municipalities award an
exclusive franchise to a single cable company.
Perce

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